The Next Step

Today I had planned on doing an easy run after church but unfortunately my brother-in-law called and needed some help moving. By the time I got home it was dark and I chose to spend some time with the kids. This week was not great for me. I got in some quality sessions but missed too many days.

Today I went to the track for some speed work. On tab for today was 5 x 1k @ 3:51 with about 1:45 recovery. I have been doing these at goal 5k pace to get the feel of running this pace without much recovery. After a 10 min warm up I took off for the first interval. Right from the start I didn't feel my best. Even after the first 400 it was feeling tough. This happens to me many times that my 1st interval is often the toughest. I was checking my watch to try to settle into the right pace but thought I was behind. When I came through the at 1k I was actually fast at 3:47. After the short rest the second interval felt much better. Number 3 was also good. However the forth interval I was had to push pretty hard at the end to stay on pace. The fifth was pretty much the same story and I am not sure I could have done another one at pace. Here are the splits....

1st - 3:47.6

2nd - 3:50.6

3rd - 3:49.4

4th - 3:50.4

5th - 3:49.5

These all add up to 19:08 which is probably much faster than I can currently run a 5k. I will do this workout a couple of more times before my last 5k of the year the first week of Dec and see how I feel. I will try to keep the pace constant.

After the workout today I went to the NCAA XC Championship. It was a really good race and came down to a battle between Josh McDougal and Galen Rupp. Then ran stride for stride the last 400 meters and Josh was able to out kick him at the end to win by about 1 second. The s race was not as interesting but did result in a new course record. I took some pictures and they can be seen here for anyone that is interested: http://flowersfamily.smugmug.com/gallery/3857167#223299905.

6 miles, 47:46

Ran an easy 8 miles today. It was really warm for this time of year (about 65) but pretty windy. Felt good today with no problems. I did have to get rid of some dogs around 2 miles. Looks like we will have another good day tomorrow and then it will get much colder. Just in time for my race on Thursday.

8 miles, 63:39

Ran an easy 6 miler today. The weather was nice again around 60 degrees and windy. Today for some reason I felt really bad. My legs just felt like lead. My pace was slow and HR elevated for the pace I was running. This is weird to me since I felt so good yesterday. I am running in the Thanksgiving race tomorrow so I will wait until I warm up in the morning to see if I actually run it as a race or just treat it as a tempo run. Right now I am leaning toward just running it as a tempo workout because 1) the weather is supposed to be cold/windy 2) there are over 4,000 people in the race and it will be hard to fight through the traffic 3) because of the way I felt today 4) it is a 4.5 mile race. How many people ask you about your PR for 4.5 miles?? So I will see how I feel tomorrow and just make a judgment call at race time.

6 miles, 49:59

6 miles,

I ran the Thanksgiving race today. This is the first time that I have done a race on Thanksgiving. I was amazed at how many people come out on Thanksgiving day. They had around 2500 finishers plus at least that many walkers so there was a lot of people there. With this many people I wanted to get up front so I didn't have to fight through traffic at the start.

I had thought that going into this race that I would do it as a tempo workout but I guess the race enthusiasm was getting the best of me because I started thinking more about race pace and times. The weather was cool (37 degrees) and pretty windy with a misty rain.

We got off to a fast start and I didn't have any problems since I got positioned so far in the front. The problem was I went out too fast and hit the first mile in 6:03 which was way too fast. I slowed down and tired to get back into the 6:30 range. Even though I went out fast I didn't feel bad and hit the 2nd mile in 6:33 which is closer to what I was hoping for. I started feeling the results of the fast pace on the 3rd mile and came through in 6:39. I wanted to see if I could pick up my pace the last 1.5 miles because I started to feel a little better. I managed a 6:34 on the 4th mile and finished the last half mile in 3:15.

I was pretty happy with my time but I have to wonder how much faster I could have ran if I wouldn't have went out so fast. I have not ran many shorter races so I am still not comfortable establishing my early pace. It seems once I get past that first mile that I can settle into a nice pace from that point on and I don't vary that much. I just need to do a better job of getting out at the correct pace and then maybe having the energy to pick it up the last part of the race. Anyway when I ran the comparison calculator on my time this race was actually better than the 10k I did a couple of weeks ago. So I know that I am improving I just need to execute better in these races.

Today I just wanted to do an short easy run after the race yesterday. It was cool (27 degrees) and windy this morning. At the start my legs felt real heavy kind of like they have been all week. After a couple of miles I started to feel better. The pace was better than my run on Wed and my HR was back to normal for an easy run. Hopefully this is a good sign. I hope to get a long run in tomorrow if I can balance with the family activities.

5 miles, 38:55

Today I did an easy long run. I did a race on Thursday so I didn't want to push the pace much but did want to get in a longer run. It was 27 degrees with a slight wind this morning. My legs were a little tired but overall felt ok. We had a beautiful sunrise this morning so it was cool to be out there and see that. I did pick up the pace the last 3 miles just slightly which is something that I have been doing on all my long runs.

12 miles, 1:37:15